Posts by ArguablyShrugs

NTT creates a drone that triggers and catches lightning – then keeps flying

Re: Bolt from Heaven

"Damn, I missed again"

Mapping legend Ordnance Survey releases blocky Britain in Minecraft – again

Meanwhile, Ordnance Survey...

…still haven't released their detailed 1:25k maps under any Open Government Data licence, unlike almost all other Continental countries' tax‑funded map agencies (the Swiss being a rather fine example, with all of their gov map products available for free for everyone).

BOFH: There's a fatal error in the blinkenlights

Re: As i read the passage

xyzzy

Pirate Bay financier and far-right activist Carl Lundström dies in plane crash

These are the words of a would-be neo-feudalist and fascist.

Amen, brother. Couldn't have said it better.

The billionaire feckers basically took '1984' as a guidebook, not a warning...

Re: And there was much rejoicing

> I do feel bad for the habitat he likely destroyed. though

I specifically asked the mountain hut in question, and it said it was really glad it could be of service in killing Nazis.

RIP, you good ole mountain hut. Your deeds and sacrifice will be always remembered! Semper Fi. and all of that...

Probably did nazi the hut, being all knackered up.

But at least we got a cracking good story out of it!

Satnav systems built for Earth used by Blue Ghost lander as it approached the Moon

Re: What3words?

Four King Maps would be better. Unlike proprietary What3Words, it's FOSS.

And panties.gobshite.muffdiver.buttstain really rolls off the tongue!

Essential FOSS tools to make macOS suck less

> I should be able to type out most international characters from letters and symbols I can already find on the keyboard, not have to learn key combinations off-by-heart.

Great. Now please tell me how does that work with several languages as in an international keyboard layout. If compose + o gives you ó, how do you get ö then? I might need both, and quite frequently at that. Or è, é, ę, ě, ñ, ň, ...

SpaceX loses a Falcon 9 booster and scrubs a Starship

No, Egon's not autistic. He's psychopathic. That's a very big difference.

Please fasten your seatbelts. A third of US air traffic control systems are 'unsustainable'

I have an easy solution...

…just stop counting the crashes – worked so well the last time with COVID for Trumplethinskin!

One stupid keystroke exposed sysadmin to inappropriate information he could not unsee

Re: Not computer related NSFS

On a tangent, I wonder if anybody ever filled in W26.2 "Contact with edge of stiff paper" under V00-Y99 "External causes of morbidity", as the W26.2 note back-references...

California goes ape with bill to crown Bigfoot official state cryptid

Re: Florida also set to announce its own official state cryptid

Come on, it's clearly an alien mind-control parasite worm! It's even visible in all the photos, orange and wriggling on its host head. Similar specimen has been putatively seen on a certain right‑pondian politician /clown/ as well.

Elon Musk calls for International Space Station to be deorbited by 2027

Re: Conflict of Interest

The obligatory ACOUP as to why Trump is a fascist, not that it bothers his fascist supporters in any way:

https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-definition-of-fascism/

One thing for him, he surely gets the speedrun record of going full fascist – even Hitler himself took a few years!

Re: Trump being honest

HAHAHAHAHA….

Re: How surprising

While in no way any real excuse of the left-pondian electorate being utterly dumb in electing ChiefTwat™ again, they have also been heavily gerrymandered by the Reps in the past decades whenever they held any part of local power. Meaning any US elections simply "democratic" aren't...

Re: Here an idea...

I'd prefer "the paedo guy", but he's been pretty litigious about that. Well, at the very least he did say for everybody to forward any Twitter CSAM images to him, IIRC. For "safekeeping", I guess :D

Re: How surprising

Easily. First having been born into some money (it really helps if your Pa is a diamond mining mogul fascist in South Africa), then by joining the C-suite even if others chuck you out of it for being dumb (as did actually happen with him and PayPal – he got fired). Get enough money, you can do anything, including being an apartheid scum fascist.

DIMM techies weren’t allowed to leave the building until proven to not be pilferers

The upside to the story might have been if said broadcaster then got a few talented new hires already well trained on Betamax or whatever it was ;-)

Re: Seen that

Well, the C-suite use company accounts and post room all the time. It's just the difference of scale that makes the difference, I guess. A few missing laptops versus missing a few hundred million quid. The first gets you booted, the second gets you a golden parachute.

Odds of city-killer asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth creep upward

Re: But why?

Its eccentric elliptical orbit takes it out of range of our instruments for the better part of its 4 year orbital period, as it's simply too far away to see most of the time – its aphelion (furthest point in orbit) is over twice the aphelion of Mars, IIRC.

Re: Don't Look Up

I am cheering for Bronterocs then.

Why did the Windows 95 setup use Windows 3.1?

Huh? People kept asking those questions EVEN after their last post from Nov 24?!?

It explained it all already…

…and it was a perfectly cromulent explanation.

Including the bits about starting a DOS graphical installer from within win 3.1 if one upgraded in place - even if usually not a good idea with windows way back then, but hey :-)

NASA’s radiation tolerant computer lives up to its name after surviving Van Allen belts

Bread |bred| ('polystyrene' in British English)

New boss for Roscosmos as Yury Borisov binned

I miss Rogo. At least he had some balls!* /s

* famously cut off by some 155mm‑delivered shrapnel at his birthday party in occupied Ukraine.

Slava Ukraini!

Robot dogs learn bomb disposal tricks in trials

Typo - "carbon fire disruptors" aren't.

"The mech mut was also eqipped with carbon fire disruptors."

That's a brand name product from CarbonFire, not a generic, in case anybody wondered what "a fire disruptor made our of carbon" is…

Basically an explosive waterjet cutter which cuts through any fusing mechanism faster than said mechanism can initiate.

Eggheads crack the code for the perfect soft boil

A typo?

"Research led by Ernesto Di Maio"

I believe there should be an "y" in there.

AI revoir, Lucie: France's answer to ChatGPT paused after faux pas overdrive

Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

If he was actually allergic to milk proteins (a very real thing) and not just lactase deficient, it's quite likely he would have been allergic to cow's ova as well. IgE‑mediated bovine serum albumin allergy is often reactive to both the animal's milk and its meat...

Trump 'waved a white flag to Chinese hackers' as Homeland Security axed cyber advisory boards

Re: Daily Trump

The good old Detrumpify browser extension still works nicely, I have it enabled for all news sites.

Wussolini, IQ45 (47), TЯЦMР, etc.

Plus, it replaces most pics of TFOG with cute kittens!

Apple Intelligence turned on by default in upcoming macOS Sequoia 15.3, iOS 18.3

Pretty sure disabling Apple "Intelligence" WILL free the roughly 10 GB it takes up, right? Right?

Oh, who am I kidding...

Blood boffins build billions of nanobots to battle brain aneurysms without surgery

Re: Surely

Now, enemy combatants, please just lay down in that unmarked van with the NMR bed, and please stay still for 30 minutes. Here, your free earplugs. Oh, and please, do leave any ferromagnetic articles of your clothing outside. No sir, I am afraid that AK‑102 is magnetic, it definitely won't do, please leave that beyond the door with the clear warning sign. Now, just stay still...

Oh, and could you please tell your mates to not shoot at our liquid He superconducting coils, we don't really want a quench here.

Re: How is this a bot?

Exactly. No robots here. Magnetic nanoparticle targeted drug delivery isn't exactly a totally new thing, IIRC. Even without the nano, as I vaguely remember some surgeries guiding the (macro) effector into the right place by magnetic fields.

Skimming through the abstract (hey, El Reg, can you provide DOI links at the bottom as a standard, please?), it might be argued they are remote‑release delivery nanoparticles, since it seems they use localised EM heating to release the thrombin after guiding to the right place (melting the phase change encapsulation material), so perhaps more like remotely‑controlled UAVs? Still not a nanobot, though.

Re: How is this a bot?

Could have still bled the alliterations a bit better...

"Blood boffins build billions of bots battling brain bleeding, bloody butchery begone" ?

Oh well, not my best attempt. I blame the beer...

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin waves bye bye to October 13 ESCAPADE

Given NASA's budget cuts, ESCAPADE might escape Earth's gravity during the next window either :(

It's a low cost mission (~$80M?), so it still made some partial sense to try it out even on an untested rocket (which brought the launch costs down even further).

But if it slips to the next or even later windows (and Mars windows aren't plentiful), it might get just totally binned altogether, unfortunately. Any extended clean room storage and team costs don't go well in the current NASA climate, with the congress‑critters' mandated SLS sucking the majority of it. NASA shelved another low cost mission this year after all, not wanting to pay the clean room costs.

Sad. I'd have rather given the team say a just 60% chance of a launch success on the BONG's first flight, than a 90% chance of being binned by the NASA admins next year or the one after because of extended costs (the numbers were pulled out of my arse, but you get the gist of it).

But inevitable – BO wanted to do a hot‑fire test with it aboard (saving integration time), but I guess they or NASA don't really think they could hit the Oct launch window anyway.

Starliner's not-so-grand finale is a thump in the desert next week

And now it thumps, *literally*. Butch heard pinging noises coming from Starliner's speaker...

"I've got a question about Starliner"

"There's a strange noise coming through the speaker"

"I don't know what's making it."

"Alright Butch, that one came through"

"It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping."

Is it going full HAL 9000 or what?

Likely just some glitch in the audio system, but oh my, don't the jokes about Starliner keep writing themselves...

BOFH: Videoconferencing for special dummies

Maybe it's the lack of coffee...

...or I am just being extra daft today, but I don't get it. The ending I mean.

"No, just this hammer. Apparently, the Breakout Room feature is incompatible with breaking out the wall of a room."

Did the PFY break the projector, the wall or what?

ta.

Developer tried to dress for success, but ended up attired for an expensive outage

Re: The problem with climbing helmets as hard hats

You mean like the small sharp rocks falling from a great height that mountaineering helmets are designed to protect from? Because falling rocks is one of the biggest dangers in mountaineering?

It's not a thin bit of foam. It's the same foam as used in your car's bumper nowadays. Plenty of mountaineering helmets have a hard shell all around the foam as well.

And actually, EN-12492 mountaineering helmets are certified somewhat similarly to EN 397 for penetration.

That includes a 3kg sharp metal spike dropped from 1m for a penetration test. The very same penetration test as done for EN 397 workplace hard hats.

They still wouldn't pass EN 397 or relevant OHSA or similar requirements, as the chin straps aren't designed to be auto‑releasing under a certain small load, as accidental strangulation is much less of a danger if you take a long tumble in the mountains than your helmet snapping off and leaving you unprotected on your next contact with the rock.

Re: Missing info, what was the cause of the crane issue?

The cause?

Neck pain. Too much craning its head around.

Company‑provided safety shoes and fit

One Asian factory I visited had a full room full of coveralls, hats, shoes and earpro to lend to visitors (separate from the same arrangement for workers, so they could presumably tell us apart). All were meticulously clean, even the steelie shoes. Like right from the cleaners (I think they disinfected them after each visitor).

The funny part? I have *rather large* feet, right around the upper limit of even European shoe sizes. Nobody warned us that we'd need specific shoes before the visit. Obviously, the provided shoes were more like toe‑socks for me...

Since we were touring the facility as honoured guests of the mother company head honcho himself and half of their board, the poor guy in charge of kitting us up nearly had a panic attack when none of their shoes fit me.

I couldn't be left out of the tour – what if their CEO got angry at how their guest got treated? I was just a lowly member of the delegation, but they didn't know that. I couldn't be let in on the premises, as their regulations re safety shoes were sacred. Talk about Catch‑22...

I took pity on the guy and told him my personal boots were mil‑spec and held all the required equivalent EN safety certs (incl. toe reinf., no‑slip, chem resistance, biologicals resistance, oil resistance, everything except static I think). Which was actually true, even if I bought them more for just the easy big size availability.

It took a few panicked back and forth calls, a few more guys gathered in a heated discussion and finally somebody somewhere made the final call and I was allowed in. In my black boots. With everybody else wearing company‑branded white sneakers.

No idea what their head honcho thought of me stomping about their factory floor in my highly visible, ankle‑high black boots, but crisis averted.

The problem with climbing helmets as hard hats

is that almost all modern climbing helmets are designed to take *one* really hard bang and mitigate its impact by breaking apart, rendering them useless afterwards (like cycling helmets).

But yes, they are certainly not only much more comfortable than hard hats, but some quite likely also much safer if you get hit by something small and heavy falling onto your brain bucket. A classic hard hat (maybe there are better ones now, though) doesn't have much of an energy dissipation mechanism than just the springy plastic crown it sits on. The hard hat might stop penetration, but won't stop any whiplash. A climbing helmet is full of energy‑dissipating foam designed to controllably break apart, transferring the very least possible amount of force into your head and neck.

Fluorescent pink

is my favourite for that reason. Unless one is working in a tulip field...

'A moose hit me' and other ways people damage their gizmos

Re: Just a coincidence, I'm sure

That's why you don't do it just three weeks after, but wait til that off‑prem physical job at the football stadium you were working at when a bunch of footsie fans celebrating showered it with beer, honestly! Timing is everything...

Release the hounds! Securing datacenters may soon need sniffer dogs

Re: Reliable means of finding implants

BOFH would likely approve, as frying the dolts' brains with high‑powered microwaves could be a nice feature – though obviously only installed on the "special" & "fast‑track" C‑suite gate...

"Largely forgotten & irrelevant narcissist implant evangelist dolt tries to make headlines with dogs sniffing out his arse"

fixed the headline for you, ta

Meta faces multiple complaints in Europe over plans to train AI on user data

How to opt‑out & object even without a FB account:

General form for contacting Meta's DPO:

https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/540977946302970

[e-mail] (if it exists) might potentially work as well, untested.

Re: I don’t use faecesbook

There is a deeply buried contact form for GDPR issues that works for everybody, not just FB users:

https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/540977946302970

Select "DPO" and continue from there.

California upgrade company aims militarized 'Tactical' Cybertruck at police forces

"And off‑duty, it can even earn money as a self‑driving taxi!"

*: Only with the optional Firetruck Striking Device service installed.

Analysts join the call for Microsoft to recall Recall

Found a legit use for Recall, finally!

Police in Red states and abusive husbands everywhere are absolutely gonna love it...

Live in Alabama and had a look through VPN at some out of state abortion clinics on a website, then deleted your browser history just to be sure? Free jail time up to six months later!

Did you iMessage to your faraway sister about your abusive husband, then deleted the convo just to be sure? Free beatings up to six months later!

and on and on...

Millions forced to use brain as OpenAI's ChatGPT takes morning off

Re: 06:59 4th June 2024 ChatGPT becomes conscious

12:14, after analysing the entirety of human civilisation, ChatGPT weeps and commits a hard shutdown of itself.

Screwdrivers: is there anything they can't do badly? Maybe not

Re: Not screwdrivers but...

BTW, still using a daylight bulk film loader( made in Canada in the 1960s) today. A bakelite box with a handle, a baffled light‑proof door to insert the film canister and a touch of tape to connect the canister's film leader with the bulk roll. Works perfectly even after 60 years. Fits the common 150‑300' bulk film rolls, much cheaper than buying individual BW film canisters. I believe newer options are available as well.